text: From as early as 1948 to at least 2017, there was a long-standing myth that Rutherford was the first scientist to observe and report an artificial transmutation of a stable element into another element: nitrogen into oxygen. It was thought by many people to be one of Rutherfords greatest accomplishments. The New Zealand government even issued a commemorative stamp in the belief that the nitrogen-to-oxygen discovery belonged to Rutherford. Beginning in 2017, many scientific institutions corrected their versions of this history to indicate that the credit for the discovery belongs to Patrick Blackett, who undertook this research at Rutherfords suggestion and with his help and advice. Rutherford did detect the ejected proton in 1919 and interpreted it as evidence for disintegration of the nitrogen nucleus (to lighter nuclei). In 1925, Blackett showed that the actual product is oxygen and identified the true reaction as N + α → O + p. Rutherford therefore recognised "that the nucleus may increase rather than diminish in mass as the result of collisions in which the proton is expelled".